Friday, June 7, 2013

On the Red Carpet # 5 : Rising Calm by Haley Fisher

Hello everyone! Welcome to my On the Red Carpet. This is basically an exclusive feature at my blog where I'll be hosting author guest posts, promos and/or interviews. This is not a weekly meme, as I don't plan to host these every week, but I'll be doing it when an author does a guest post, interview or promo on my blog, either as a part of the tour or in general. If you like, you can do the same. Just use the image above (or any other properly accredited image bearing this feature's name), put a link back to this blog and then proceed with your posts.

This is the fifth ORC so far and I am very happy to have Haley Fisher, author of the latest book Rising Calm. Given further below is her guest post regarding the same book, hope you enjoy reading!

Book Blurb:On Cara Weaver’s first day at her new high school—merely the next in a long line of new schools—she meets two senior boys: James Sable and Crispin Calaway. They’re new too; they’ve been at the school just longer than she has, and they’ve never made an effort to reach out to anyone. Until she comes. When her friends find out, they’re awed. But Cara can't shake the feeling that there’s more to James and Crispin than the two are telling.

As the days go on, everything at her new home seems to be going better than it has in any of the previous cities she’s lived in. She loves her friends, gets a job at a bookstore, and even starts to spend more time with Crispin and James. She’s happy. But all that begins to change when she comes to realize that the two boys she’s becoming close to are hiding something. It’s then that she knows her unexplainable wariness of them has been justified all along. But she keeps it a secret.

Days later, when a stranger accosts her outside a small shopping center, Crispin and James arrive just in time to help her. But they seem know the attacker. And instead of running him off, Crispin and James take Cara away, for her own protection.

With little explanation, Cara is told that she’s important and that she can’t go home until the boys have sorted some things out. In the meantime, Cara’s world is being turned upside down as she finds out that there is more to her life than she possibly imagined.

Praise for the book:

This was a great read! It's geared toward young adults but even as an old adult I loved the story and found the characters smart and engaging. I am very much looking forward to the next installment!

– Midge (Amazon)

Haley Fisher does an amazing job of really bringing the story to life with her words. She is a very talented young author. I can't wait to read the sequel to this book.

– Patriot (Amazon) * * *

Naming the Book (:Things You Kept in Mind)

This is an interesting question, mostly because I’m not sure how much of the coming-up-with-the-title process I remember. I know I was well into Book Two by the time I decided it was high time a title was created. I know I had two or three options swirling around in my head that I wasn’t totally in love with. I knew I wanted the titles of however many books there were in the series to match. And I knew, more than anything else, that the title was going to have to make sense with the story. I didn’t want it to be a riddle, or to foreshadow the tenth book in the series or whatever—I wanted people to finish the book and think, “Yes. Of course that’s what it should be called.”

So. It started with the list of ideas. A very short list, as titles aren’t quite my strongest suit (I can’t even name my poems anything good. I definitely couldn’t come up with titles for every single one of my chapters). For this list of possibilities, all I really knew starting out was that I wanted the title to tie into something. The words “warrior” and “prophecy” were in a lot of them. So were “quiet” and “still” and a few other synonyms of “calm”. My general rule was that if after a day or so of staring at a title I wasn’t able to come up with a possible title for the following books, then the potential title for this one was going to be tossed out. I wanted them all to go together, no matter how long or short the series would end up being.

By the time I had it whittled down to a few okay ideas, I took my whole laptop over to a friend’s house for her opinion. Not that her choice was going to be the be-all end-all decision, I just wanted to know what someone who had gotten to know the book thought. She and I generally agreed that a couple of the ideas were really just okay. The third could be brought up to par. And the ideas for the sequels to the third idea were actually pretty good; just the first one needed to be tweaked. And tweaked it was.

The things that I really kept in mind (or tried to) throughout the process was what would titles could build with the story. What the one thing was that I could keep in mind that would not only encompass each book, but the series as a whole as the sequels came out. What would make sense with this world, this story, as it progressed. And what I decided on was storms. That imagery. The idea of something starting out slowly and building until the anticipated rain came pouring down. So I do already have titles for the sequels. What came last was this title. Rising Calm. The calm before the storm that is slowly but surely going to become something more.

* * *

About the Author

I'm Haley Fisher, a college student in Kansas, and I've just signed a contract with
a company called Silver Tongue Press to publish my first book!

For as long as I can remember I've been an avid reader and an aspiring writer,
but the step toward actually getting a book published is an enormous one for
me. This is a big deal. And, as I've been told, the next step to being
successful is getting the word out that my book exists.

So, though it's not in print yet—it's coming out February 14th—I'd love for
people to keep an eye out for Rising Calm. It'll be the first
in a series of books about a young girl who finds out her life and her fate are
far bigger than she ever realized. At the risk of giving too much away, the
most I can tell you for now is that there is magic, prophecy, new worlds, and a
cast of characters who I love to write.

Hey! I’m Munira, a 20-something Asian blogger who loves sugar, spice and everything nice. Oh and I love some “Dark” stuff as well! My hobbies are to read, sleep, eat and fangirl over the littlest of things. I started my little book blogging heaven because I love to rant about books and authors and I adoreconnecting with like-minded readers from all over the world. Are you a book blogger? A reader? Visiting for the first time? Read the Long Rant about me to know more. Shoot me a tweet over at Twitter or elsewhere, I’d love to hear from you :) Are you terribly shy (like me) when it comes to talking to strangers? No worries! You can just silently stalk my online rants by subscribing to my sweet, sweet blog. Have a happy time :D